A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy Part 12

Thou shalt go, La Fleur! said I.

- And what mistress, La Fleur, said I, canst thou have picked up in so little a time at Paris? La Fleur laid his hand upon his breast, and said 'twas a pet.i.te demoiselle, at Monsieur le Count de B-'s.-- La Fleur had a heart made for society; and, to speak the truth of him, let as few occasions slip him as his master;--so that somehow or other,--but how,--heaven knows,--he had connected himself with the demoiselle upon the landing of the staircase, during the time I was taken up with my pa.s.sport; and as there was time enough for me to win the Count to my interest, La Fleur had contrived to make it do to win the maid to his. The family, it seems, was to be at Paris that day, and he had made a party with her, and two or three more of the Count's household, upon the boulevards.

Happy people! that once a week at least are sure to lay down all your cares together, and dance and sing and sport away the weights of grievance, which bow down the spirit of other nations to the earth.

THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.

La Fleur had left me something to amuse myself with for the day more than I had bargain'd for, or could have enter'd either into his head or mine.

He had brought the little print of b.u.t.ter upon a currant leaf: and as the morning was warm, and he had a good step to bring it, he had begg'd a sheet of waste paper to put betwixt the currant leaf and his hand.--As that was plate sufficient, I bade him lay it upon the table as it was; and as I resolved to stay within all day, I ordered him to call upon the traiteur, to bespeak my dinner, and leave me to breakfast by myself.

When I had finished the b.u.t.ter, I threw the currant-leaf out of the window, and was going to do the same by the waste paper;--but stopping to read a line first, and that drawing me on to a second and third,--I thought it better worth; so I shut the window, and drawing a chair up to it, I sat down to read it.

It was in the old French of Rabelais's time, and for aught I know might have been wrote by him: --it was moreover in a Gothic letter, and that so faded and gone off by damps and length of time, it cost me infinite trouble to make anything of it.--I threw it down; and then wrote a letter to Eugenius;--then I took it up again, and embroiled my patience with it afresh;--and then to cure that, I wrote a letter to Eliza.--Still it kept hold of me; and the difficulty of understanding it increased but the desire.

I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle of Burgundy; I at it again,--and, after two or three hours poring upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made sense of it; but to make sure of it, the best way, I imagined, was to turn it into English, and see how it would look then;--so I went on leisurely, as a trifling man does, sometimes writing a sentence,-- then taking a turn or two,--and then looking how the world went, out of the window; so that it was nine o'clock at night before I had done it.--I then began and read it as follows.

THE FRAGMENT. PARIS.

- Now, as the notary's wife disputed the point with the notary with too much heat,--I wish, said the notary, (throwing down the parchment) that there was another notary here only to set down and attest all this. -

- And what would you do then, Monsieur? said she, rising hastily up.--The notary's wife was a little fume of a woman, and the notary thought it well to avoid a hurricane by a mild reply.--I would go, answered he, to bed.--You may go to the devil, answer'd the notary's wife.

Now there happening to be but one bed in the house, the other two rooms being unfurnished, as is the custom at Paris, and the notary not caring to lie in the same bed with a woman who had but that moment sent him pell mell to the devil, went forth with his hat and cane and short cloak, the night being very windy, and walk'd out, ill at ease, towards the Pont Neuf.

Of all the bridges which ever were built, the whole world who have pa.s.s'd over the Pont Neuf must own, that it is the n.o.blest,--the finest,--the grandest,--the lightest,--the longest,--the broadest, that ever conjoin'd land and land together upon the face of the terraqueous globe.

[By this it seems as if the author of the fragment had not been a Frenchman.]

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is but a capfull of wind in or about Paris, 'tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu'd there than in any other aperture of the whole city,--and with reason good and cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d'eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth.

The poor notary, just as he was pa.s.sing by the sentry, instinctively clapp'd his cane to the side of it, but in raising it up, the point of his cane catching hold of the loop of the sentinel's hat, hoisted it over the spikes of the ball.u.s.trade clear into the Seine. -

- 'TIS AN ILL WIND, said a boatman, who catched it, WHICH BLOWS n.o.bODY ANY GOOD.

The sentry, being a Gascon, incontinently twirled up his whiskers, and levell'd his arquebuss.

Arquebusses in those days went off with matches; and an old woman's paper lantern at the end of the bridge happening to be blown out, she had borrow'd the sentry's match to light it: --it gave a moment's time for the Gascon's blood to run cool, and turn the accident better to his advantage.--'TIS AN ILL WIND, said he, catching off the notary's castor, and legitimating the capture with the boatman's adage.

The poor notary crossed the bridge, and pa.s.sing along the Rue de Dauphine into the fauxbourgs of St. Germain, lamented himself as he walked along in this manner: -

Luckless man that I am! said the notary, to be the sport of hurricanes all my days: --to be born to have the storm of ill language levell'd against me and my profession wherever I go; to be forced into marriage by the thunder of the church to a tempest of a woman;--to be driven forth out of my house by domestic winds, and despoil'd of my castor by pontific ones!--to be here, bareheaded, in a windy night, at the mercy of the ebbs and flows of accidents!- -Where am I to lay my head?--Miserable man! what wind in the two- and-thirty points of the whole compa.s.s can blow unto thee, as it does to the rest of thy fellow-creatures, good?

As the notary was pa.s.sing on by a dark pa.s.sage, complaining in this sort, a voice call'd out to a girl, to bid her run for the next notary.--Now the notary being the next, and availing himself of his situation, walk'd up the pa.s.sage to the door, and pa.s.sing through an old sort of a saloon, was usher'd into a large chamber, dismantled of everything but a long military pike,--a breastplate,- -a rusty old sword, and bandoleer, hung up, equidistant, in four different places against the wall.

An old personage who had heretofore been a gentleman, and unless decay of fortune taints the blood along with it, was a gentleman at that time, lay supporting his head upon his hand in his bed; a little table with a taper burning was set close beside it, and close by the table was placed a chair: --the notary sat him down in it; and pulling out his inkhorn and a sheet or two of paper which he had in his pocket, he placed them before him; and dipping his pen in his ink, and leaning his breast over the table, he disposed everything to make the gentleman's last will and testament

Alas! Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, raising himself up a little, I have nothing to bequeath, which will pay the expense of bequeathing, except the history of myself, which I could not die in peace, unless I left it as a legacy to the world: the profits arising out of it I bequeath to you for the pains of taking it from me.--It is a story so uncommon, it must be read by all mankind;--it will make the fortunes of your house.--The notary dipp'd his pen into his inkhorn.--Almighty Director of every event in my life!

said the old gentleman, looking up earnestly, and raising his hands towards heaven,--Thou, whose hand has led me on through such a labyrinth of strange pa.s.sages down into this scene of desolation, a.s.sist the decaying memory of an old, infirm, and broken-hearted man;--direct my tongue by the spirit of thy eternal truth, that this stranger may set down nought but what is written in that BOOK, from whose records, said he, clasping his hands together, I am to be condemn'd or acquitted!--the notary held up the point of his pen betwixt the taper and his eye. -

It is a story, Monsieur le Notaire, said the gentleman, which will rouse up every affection in nature;--it will kill the humane, and touch the heart of Cruelty herself with pity. -

- The notary was inflamed with a desire to begin, and put his pen a third time into his ink-horn--and the old gentleman, turning a little more towards the notary, began to dictate his story in these words: -

- And where is the rest of it, La Fleur? said I, as he just then enter'd the room.

THE FRAGMENT, AND THE BOUQUET. {1} PARIS.

When La Fleur came up close to the table, and was made to comprehend what I wanted, he told me there were only two other sheets of it, which he had wrapped round the stalks of a bouquet to keep it together, which he had presented to the demoiselle upon the boulevards.--Then prithee, La Fleur, said I, step back to her to the Count de B-'s hotel, and see if thou canst get it.--There is no doubt of it, said La Fleur;--and away he flew.

In a very little time the poor fellow came back quite out of breath, with deeper marks of disappointment in his looks than could arise from the simple irreparability of the fragment. Juste Ciel!

in less than two minutes that the poor fellow had taken his last tender farewell of her--his faithless mistress had given his gage d'amour to one of the Count's footmen,--the footman to a young sempstress,--and the sempstress to a fiddler, with my fragment at the end of it.--Our misfortunes were involved together: --I gave a sigh,--and La Fleur echoed it back again to my ear.

- How perfidious! cried La Fleur.--How unlucky! said I.

- I should not have been mortified, Monsieur, quoth La Fleur, if she had lost it.--Nor I, La Fleur, said I, had I found it.

Whether I did or no will be seen hereafter.

THE ACT OF CHARITY. PARIS.

The man who either disdains or fears to walk up a dark entry may be an excellent good man, and fit for a hundred things, but he will not do to make a good Sentimental Traveller.--I count little of the many things I see pa.s.s at broad noonday, in large and open streets.--Nature is shy, and hates to act before spectators; but in such an un.o.bserved corner you sometimes see a single short scene of hers worth all the sentiments of a dozen French plays compounded together,--and yet they are absolutely fine;--and whenever I have a more brilliant affair upon my hands than common, as they suit a preacher just as well as a hero, I generally make my sermon out of 'em;--and for the text,--"Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,"--is as good as any one in the Bible.

There is a long dark pa.s.sage issuing out from the Opera Comique into a narrow street; 'tis trod by a few who humbly wait for a fiacre, {2} or wish to get off quietly o'foot when the opera is done. At the end of it, towards the theatre, 'tis lighted by a small candle, the light of which is almost lost before you get half-way down, but near the door--'tis more for ornament than use: you see it as a fixed star of the least magnitude; it burns,--but does little good to the world, that we know of.

In returning along this pa.s.sage, I discerned, as I approached within five or six paces of the door, two ladies standing arm-in- arm with their backs against the wall, waiting, as I imagined, for a fiacre;--as they were next the door, I thought they had a prior right; so edged myself up within a yard or little more of them, and quietly took my stand.--I was in black, and scarce seen.

The lady next me was a tall lean figure of a woman, of about thirty-six; the other of the same size and make, of about forty: there was no mark of wife or widow in any one part of either of them;--they seem'd to be two upright vestal sisters, unsapped by caresses, unbroke in upon by tender salutations.--I could have wish'd to have made them happy: --their happiness was destin'd that night, to come from another quarter.

A low voice, with a good turn of expression, and sweet cadence at the end of it, begg'd for a twelve-sous piece betwixt them, for the love of heaven. I thought it singular that a beggar should fix the quota of an alms--and that the sum should be twelve times as much as what is usually given in the dark.--They both seemed astonished at it as much as myself.--Twelve sous! said one.--A twelve-sous piece! said the other,--and made no reply.

The poor man said, he knew not how to ask less of ladies of their rank; and bow'd down his head to the ground.

Poo! said they,--we have no money.

The beggar remained silent for a moment or two, and renew'd his supplication.

- Do not, my fair young ladies, said he, stop your good ears against me.--Upon my word, honest man! said the younger, we have no change.--Then G.o.d bless you, said the poor man, and multiply those joys which you can give to others without change!--I observed the elder sister put her hand into her pocket.--I'll see, said she, if I have a sous. A sous! give twelve, said the supplicant; Nature has been bountiful to you, be bountiful to a poor man.

- I would friend, with all my heart, said the younger, if I had it.